Pages

Thursday, July 16

Gardeners who cook...

For a couple of years I've been hunting down recipies for some of the unusual fruit and vegies we have grown. Well, some of them aren't actually that strange to gardeners but they are not the typical food you see in a supermarket. So it stands to reason that they are also not featured very often in recipie books.

It seems that I often grow something new for a season, harvest it with good intentions and let it rot on the kitchen bench...maybe it takes guts to try something new and I just have to take my time.

So this year I've been trying to use everything that we grow and have been hunting down recipes and inventing others.

The first fruit I have struggled with in the past is the Choko. We haven't been very successful growing them here because the frost tends to kill the vines but in the past I have grown them and usually fed them to my chooks.

Even though we don't grow them we always end up with bags full each year. Maybe I'm not the only one who doesn't know how to cook these humble veg?

This is my recipe for choko crumble. Based on traditional apple crumble.

Firstly peel, core and roughly chop four large chokos.

Put them in a saucepan with one cup of sugar, one cup of water, a teaspoon of cinnamon and three cloves. Cook until the choko is tender. At this stage you can just eat the choko like stewed apple or use in any other recipies you would use apple or you can freeze it to use later.

For the crumble I use 1/4 cup each of ground almonds, coconut, ground oats, wholemeal flour and brown sugar. Rub through enough butter or marjerine to get the mixture to resemble bread crumbs.

Put the choko into a baking dish and spread the crumble on top. Cook for 20 minutes at 180 degrees.

The result was so scrumby. The kids loved it and thought it was even better than apple crumble so it was a winner all round. And now I know what to do with my chokos.